This invention is related to a game for teaching the decoding of Chinese ideographic characters by a process of pattern recognition with the English alphabetic letters.
Each Chinese character incorporates one of ten writing components called strokes. I have developed a method of designating an English letter for each stroke to decode Chinese characters. The concept is also applicable to other languages such as Japanese, Korean, German and Arabic.
The concept, known as the Tienstrokes method, evolved from the discovery of ten basic strokes used in all Chinese characters. The system for decoding any particular Chinese or Japanese ideograph is to first count the number of strokes in the ideograph, recording the number. Then each stroke is converted into a Tienstrokes alphabet character. There are ten strokes in the Tienstrokes alphabet code namely V, H, L, J, I, T, G, N, C, Z. Thus, a Chinese ideograph having five strokes is converted into a five character code of English letters. The code is then located in a dictionary to determine an English definition of the ideograph.
The purpose of this invention is to provide means for teaching the decoding process to a user so that he can then play an innovative game which depends on a working knowledge of the Tienstrokes process.
The teaching materials comprise a loose-leaf bound volume having a series of pages containing the game information. The pages are flipped back and forth while the user goes through a process of pattern recognition between the ten possible strokes in a Chinese ideograph, and their English letter counter parts. Once the user has a working knowledge of the pattern recognition procedure, and how to locate a decoded ideograph in the dictionary, he is prepared to play the game with others using a pair of dice, or to use the decoding process on a computer key board, or other communication devices.